This story is fairly misleading.
Here is a more neutral story on this, from the Washington Post, at the time the bill failed. It appears that the IP lawyers' association had actually come around to accept a compromise bill, but the stauncher opposition from universities and biotech and pharmaceutical industries convinced the relevant senators to drop it.
Universities tend to be strongly pro-patent because their scientists' research has profitable applications but they don't manufacture anything themselves, so they recuperate some of the costs of the research they fund by licensing the patents to companies, and using the licensing fees to subsidize education or further research. Without this, the profits from publicly funded research would go just to corporations. Pharmaceutical companies are also very pro-patent, since they depend on patented drugs but the high capital costs of manufacturing make them less vulnerable to patent trolls.
